The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

 

 

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Three Burials is a movie that should have been seen by more moviegoers in the theaters. The superb cinematography coupled by the great acting makes it worthy of big-screen viewing. Nevertheless, the movie still retains its emotional impact and poignancy even on the small screen, and it deserves to find a following through rentals.

At its heart, the movie is about a friendship between two men, who are from different countries but develop a strong emotional intimacy because of their shared ethos and love of the land. However, the story develops into one that parallels The Odyssey in terms of the journey undertaken (even Tommy Lee Jones alludes to one character as "The Oracle" in the director's commentary), and it evokes biblical themes of grace and redemption.

Motifs that combine both the absurd and the divine permeate this movie. There are moments that make you laugh aloud and cringe at the same time. At center is the corpse of Melquiades Estrada, who plays an ever-present role in providing both serious and comic scenarios.

Tommy Lee Jones is phenomenal in this movie. For the most part, he says very little. He's just a man who wants to do the right thing and whose code of values is very straightforward. Barry Pepper does a great job of playing a man who might eventually understand the meaning of redemption. The relationship between Jones and Pepper is one that is layered and complex. A palpable tension and anxiety exists as they enter into desolate and dangerous landscapes. What exactly will revenge entail? And do things are actually as they appear? More questions than answers actually arise as the journey continues.

This movie is GREAT. I love the Western genre, and this is one of the very best in recent memory.

Is there any better guarantee in Hollywood than putting Tommy Lee Jones in a movie? The guy is solid gold.

Although this movie may have fallen through the cracks with the public, it is a gem. Without giving too much away, within its commentary on how the whole situation along the US-Mexico border is deranged (sorry, but there's no other word for the waste of money and manpower used to hunt down poor people) is a story of honor, redemption and forgiveness.

Barry Pepper is also proving to be an immensely talented actor (go rent "61") and the addition of Betty Draper from "Mad Men" (January Jones) is a bonus.

The cinematography captures the feel of the Texas-Mexico borderlands from the rundown sleepy old towns to the open plains and valleys. Also, the director (a Mr. Jones himself) is smart enough to let the camera do all the legwork and doesn't overload the movie with unnecessary dialogue. These actors actually sound like people from this part of the world where words are only used when necessary and they actually carry meaning (take note, Hollywood, less is more!). Plus you get to hear Tommy Lee Jones speak quite a bit of Spanish in this one and yes, folks, he sounds like a Mexican Tommy Lee Jones with that same laconic way of speaking.

The DVD has nothing extra bar a commentary track with Tommy Lee Jones, Januray Jones and Dwight Jones...I mean, Dwight Yoakum who plays a redneck sheriff in the flick.

I suspected that "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" had to be a pretty good story to not only get Tommy Lee Jones to work behind the camera as a director for the first time, but also to get him to once again play a cowboy taking the corpse of his friend home. What this 2006 film has in common with "Lonesome Dove" is not the transportation of a dead friend to his rightful final resting place, but rather the way the act defines both the man and the friendship. The important difference is that this time the character Jones plays takes another living soul along on the journey south.

Jones plays Pete Perkins, who runs a small cattle ranch and has hired Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cedillo), an illegal immigrant from Mexico, to work with him. When Melquiades is killed and the local sheriff (Dwight Yoakam) refuses to do anything about it, Pete takes care of matters himself. He finds out that a young Border Patrol agent, Mike Norton (Barry Pepper), killed Melquiades, Pete captures him. Norton had buried Melquiades to hide the crime and then the body was buried a second time. Now Pete makes Norton did up the body of the man he killed, and then they head off on horses to Mexico so that Pete's friend can be returned to his family and buried in the town of Jimenez south of the Border.

Essentially, then, you have three burials and a trip as the four key sections of the film. "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" is not a suspense film, where we wonder if Pete is going to be able to carry off his plans. There are obstacles, but his success is never in doubt. Pete is very much from the worldly school where a man does what a man has to do, and despite what the situation might force him to do we never forget that the corpse is the body of his friend. Pursuing Pete and his captive is problematic since what Norton has done would become public knowledge, and this film is decidedly set in a fairly private world. The punishment Pete has selected is not simply punitive, it is instructive and whether the credit belongs to the director or to writer Guillermo Arriaga ("Amores perros") it must be said this movie ends at the perfect moment on the perfect line.

There are other characters, most notably January Jones as Lou Ann Norton, Melissa Leo as Rachel, and Levon Helm as the Old Man with the Radio, but they are relatively insignificant given what is happening with Jones and Pepper. Flashbacks are used to show both Pete's friendship with Melquiades and to let us know exactly how he ended up getting killed. Neither Pete nor Norton are privy to the other halves of the story, but then their purpose is primarily to allow us to know how each man came to be in this peculiar situation. This is not a story about revenge, it is a character study and an object lesson. What makes it powerful is the elegance of its simplicity, but the subject matter and the deterioration of the title character's body will not appeal to everyone's sensibilities.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Missing is only fullscreen
It's a great double bill with two very unique westerns in one dvd slip case but come on...The Missing in fullscreen? Read more

Published on Feb 22 2010 by Christopher William Jack

2.0 out of 5 stars Tommy Lee Jones is a great actor but the movie lacks
This movie was probably made because the US border patrol was a popular subject at the time of making this movie. However, it is too esoteric to make any point. Read more

Published on July 16 2006 by bernie

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